Subject: Computational Chemistry GRID Conference

From: "Mark Zottola - Contractor" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:11:13 -0400

Computational Chemistry GRID Conference

SURA and the University of Kentucky, with support from the Army Research
Laboratory are co-sponsoring the Computational Chemistry GRID Conference in
October.  This conference is designed to build connections between the
developments in computational chemistry and the user community, and to
provide a "bridge" between various internet protocols that are being used
to share information. This is the first Internet conference to use
technology to link Mbone and H.323 technologies into a single, distributed
environment.

The conference, on the cutting edge of both science and internet
technology, will center on applications of quantum mechanics, molecular
dynamics, solid state chemistry and biochemistry. Leaders of quantum
mechanics and molecular simulations will be speaking at this conference,
including Dr. Keiji Morokuma (Emory) and Dr. Stephen Harvey (UAB).  In
addition, developers of some of the most widely used quantum codes have
accepted invitations to speak: Dr. M. Frisch, Gaussian, Inc., Dr. Theresa
Windus of Pacific Northwest Laboratories (NWChem) and Dr. P. Bartlett of
the University of Florida (ACES II).

This conference will be held October 16th and 17th at the University of
Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky.  Talks from invited speakers will address
the applications of techniques to research problems and the use of various
state-of-the-art packages. Both morning and afternoon sessions will be
interactive, allowing remote attendees the opportunity to interact with the
speakers via the internet.  This conference will also have a web site for
those who wish to submit a poster or paper.  Registration and further
information may be found at:
http://www.sura.org/workshops

The noteworthy addition to this conference is a technical effort to span
the gulf between ACCESS Grid users and H.323 users. Previously, these two
collaborative tools have been technologically incompatible, leading to a
sharp economic divide between Internet users who had substantial resources
(to procure and run an Access Grid node) and those who had more meager
resources or needed to focus their resources on a commercially
interoperable technology (H.323 users). This conference will showcase a
gateway between the Access Grid and H.323, enabling diverse remote
conference participation and illuminating a path for less resource rich
institutions, such as HBCU's and MSI's to more fully participate in
state-of-the-art collaborative environments that are emerging on the
Internet for research and education.

This Conference is supported by SURA, under a grant from the National
Computational Science Alliance (NCSA), serving as a Partner for Advanced
Computational Services (PACS).